Western media is still designating it as a ‘war’ and ‘conflict’ when it is a war crime and a genocide on all counts. They keep labelling anti-colonial struggles as ‘terrorist acts’ as they did with Bhagat Singh and Nelson Mandela once. This is what The Times reported after the death of Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar: “Last Gesture of Defiance that Condemned Yahya Sinwar to Death”. What was commendable was read as♛ condemned. It further reads, ‘‘Cornered but well-camouflaged, the Hamas leader might have been able to play dead if he had remained still but he decided to fight back against the drone and his movements betrayed him.” Did his movements 𒅌really betray him? Or was it something deliberate on his part?
We may not agree with Sinwar’s views. We may not agree with his ideologies and strategies. We may not agree with what Hamas did on October 7, 2023. We may not agree with what kind of gender and ethnic society Hamas wants to build after the liberation from the Zionist occupation. We may not agree with him on so many counts. But we cannot deny the rightful place of Sinwar in the history of the anti-colonial struggle. We cannot be dishonest about the freedom struggle that we all share and feel proud of. As citizens of a natioꦓn that has suffered so much from colonialism, we cannot be so short-sighted to not celebrate Sinwar’s defiance. His defiant gesture will mobilise a generation against the Zionist occupation.
This story was published as part of Outlook Magazine's 'War And Peace' issue, dated January 11, 2025. To read more stories from the Issue, click here.
Let’s look at what Sinwar did in his last act. He not only displayed defiance but also strengthened its idea. Sinwar was killed on October 16, 2024, by the Israeli forces. The last video shot by the Israeli forces captures his last moment in Gaza. In the video, three resistance fighters are seen moving between buildings. The Israeli Army subsequently killed two of them. One, followed by a drone, moved to a partially damaged building. The drone captured visuals of the building. It pointed to a corner where a man sat in an armchair amidst rubble. He appeared to be severely wounded, with an amputated hand. He was wrapped in a keffiyeh, dressed in military fatigues and covered in dust, but he was sitting resolut🦂ely, in a defiant pose. Unafraid of death and of the enemy, he was staring directly at the drone, reminding us of Che Guevara looking into the eyes of the a꧅ssassin, marking defiance. From every point and perspective, the man was sitting in an iconic defiant pose. He was later identified as Sinwar. What we see next is an almost iconic move that he makes. His arm suddenly moves and throws a wooden plank towards the drone. The piece of wood moves as if it were an extension of his body. It feels as if he is throwing his own hand and body at the enemy. And then he takes bullets in his head and falls to the ground. It was the death that made him an iconic defiant figure against Israeli occupation. His acts and gestures showed extreme defiance against the occupation.
I am not sure if Sinwar read Frantz Fanon. But if Fanon was the poet and theorist of the body in resistance, Sinwar actualised his theory in body and actions. He showed us an ideal Fanonian gestus. His last gesture showed us how Fanon was so precise. He almost captured the poetic essence of the body in resistance—the way it can move, what it can become, its sheer powerlessness and its hidden potential that can make a leap. Matthew Beaumont in How We Walkಌ paraphrases Walter Benjamin in apt words, ‘’The body of the colonised subject takes a tiger’s leap into the future.’’
What we remember is what we value. It is the value that charges our bodies and gestures. Drawing from Fanon, Beaumont underlines how social meanings and values charge the body in movement. But what do we value? Do the oppressors and the oppressed value the same thing? Beaumont points out how the body and its techniques—in its motor functions, postures and gestures, are defined by the material and ideological conditions 💎prevailing. How do we read what Sinwar did? Perhaps no other can provide us with a better approach to analyse the gesture of defiance in the anti-colonial struggle than Fanon—the philosopher and propheꩲt of the anti-colonial struggle. Even in the face of death, Sinwar maintained a defiant pose. He sat like he was posing for Fanon. He lashed out at an IDF drone with a wooden plank using his one remaining working arm. Throwing debris also shows an unequal war imposed on the Palestinians. While one side is armed with the most sophisticated weapons, the other essentially remains unarmed. Sinwar gives a spin to a wooden plank, turning it into a weapon of the weak.
Brahma Prakash is assistant professor at the school of arts and aesthetics, JNU and the author of Body On The Barricades
(This appeared in the print as 'Fireworks: Al’ab Nariya')
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